


Impossible

by lexosaurus



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-13
Updated: 2020-01-13
Packaged: 2021-02-21 21:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22237309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexosaurus/pseuds/lexosaurus
Summary: There was no way her son was dead. She would have known. Oh god, she had to have known if he was. There was just...this couldn’t be possible...it wasn’t possible…
Relationships: Danny Fenton & Maddie Fenton
Comments: 44
Kudos: 767





	Impossible

“I won’t let a halfa like you best me, the ghost zone’s greatest hunter!” the metal ghost yelled, jabbing a thumb at its chest.

The teenage ghost let a stream of bright ectoplasm fly from its fist. It grinned when the shot met its mark. “Better a halfa than a tin can!”

There was that word again. Halfa. Maddie didn’t know what it meant, but then again it didn’t particularly matter. These were ghosts, not humans. Whatever capacity for language they had were mere imprints of their language production as humans. They weren’t  _ really  _ forming sentences themselves, they were just regurgitating the basic phrases and insults that they remembered from their previous lives. That was all.

The metal ghost narrowed its eyes. “You would be wise to shut your mouth now,  _ ghost child. _ ”

“You would like that, wouldn’t you?” 

Although Phantom was rather peculiar as a ghost, it was still just that: a ghost. Everything it spoke reeked of teenage arrogance and was filled with silly puns and ridiculous slang. It was obviously recently deceased, possibly from this city, and if its fighting style was anything to show, it was likely from the streets. 

It was quick on its feet, and begrudgingly successful in combat, but its fighting style was sloppy. Immature. Phantom used too much energy for his movements, and its punches and kicks left Maddie cringing from afar.

Yes, it had likely lived among the homeless population of Amity Park at some point. Between its fighting style and the fact that none of the obituaries or missing children reports in the last year matched for a short teenage boy of Phantom’s appearance, Maddie could almost be certain that this child died alone, surrounded by no one, with only a knowledge of hardship and fighting in its ectoplasm. And although Maddie should feel sorrow for this painful truth, she was now left with a rather destructive ghost to deal with.

Maddie squinted up at the night sky. The two ghosts were really going at it, and their light show was beginning to pick up speed. If this didn’t end soon, it could start causing property damage.

Instincts begged Maddie to jump out from the bushes she was hiding in, brandish her gun, and shoot both of them down. But she resisted. She couldn’t afford to let them know she was here. It would ruin her plans.

There was a loud bang, and Maddie tightened her grip on her ecto-gun. It would appear that Phantom landed a high powered ecto-blast at its opponent, causing it to come crashing to the ground. It slammed against the pavement, sending chunks of rock into the air.

“That’s what you get for breaking my model rocket!” Phantom shouted.

Huh, interesting. So the ghost owned worldly possessions. Maddie shouldn’t be surprised, considering how much time it spent on Earth.

Which, in fact, was the whole reason she was out here.

A ghost that attacked humans was worrying. Even more worrying was Phantom, a ghost who spent so much time amongst humans, Maddie was beginning to question where the ghost considered home.

Because what was the ghost’s reason for playing hero to the humans? Why was it spotted longing around Amity Park when it wasn’t actively looking for another one of its kind to fight? Phantom seemed desperate for approval— _ human  _ approval. While Maddie had previously chalked it up to an extreme case of narcissism, now, after months of studying the ghost, she couldn’t be so sure.

Going off Maddie’s almost certain theory that this ghost didn’t have family or friends to speak of as its time as a human, that meant that it died alone, completely and utterly alone. It had no one who accepted it as a child, who loved and nurtured it as a parent should, and who gave it the attention that any child needs. It had no community with humans as a human, which makes for wonderful obsessive tendencies as a ghost.

Where was this ghost’s lair?

Maddie had a hypothesis that this ghost, while it originally had a liar in the Ghost Zone as all ghosts do, has an obsession that is so strong that its lair is actively moving to Earth.

When Phantom first appeared in Amity, it was sporadic. It would appear every once in a while, engage in sloppy combat with a ghost, and then disappear. It didn’t have ecto-blasts, it seemed to hardly have a grasp on its intangibility, and overall it seemed more like a frightened child than a cocky ghost.

It was painfully obvious Phantom was a recently-born ghost.

But then it started coming back more often. Maddie didn’t know how, but she theorized that part of Phantom’s powers were the ability to locate natural portals. Regardless, Phantom was fighting ghosts in Amity more often, it was gaining new powers, it was talking more both to the ghosts and to the citizens. 

This was when both her and Jack moved capturing Phantom to the top of their priority lists. Phantom was quickly becoming more powerful, and they couldn’t allow him to put the citizens of Amity in more danger than they already were.

Soon after this shift in personality, Phantom took a turn for the worse: it started lounging in Amity when there were no ghosts to be found.

At first, Maddie and her husband were stumped as to why. Surely the ghost would need to go back to the Ghost Zone to recharge after its obsession was fulfilled, right? Every ghost did, so why was Phantom seemingly different?

But then it clicked. He was no different from the other ghosts, he was just adapting his haunt to fit his obsession. And so his lair was becoming Amity Park itself.

While there were ghosts that haunted on Earth, they were rare, weak due to the little ectoplasm in the Earth’s air, and their haunts usually consisted of single rooms or small homes that the ghosts could never leave. These types of ghosts were created through an especially tragic event, and their obsession was tied down to the building itself. 

So then, if Phantom was creating a new lair in Amity, but he was also  _ gaining _ —not losing—power by the day, he was more dangerous than Maddie and Jack could have imagined.

Phantom needed to be stopped. But Maddie was no idiot; she knew she would not be able to face him head-on. 

She had a plan.

It was quite simple, and would weaken Phantom just enough to contain it. If her theory was correct, then after this fight was over, it would go back to its lair in Amity, wherever that may be. All Maddie had to do was follow him there, destroy the haunt—triggering its obsession and causing it to become fixated on rebuilding the haunt—and then capture the ghost right then and there.

While no plan was perfect, this was the closest to perfect Maddie could get.

There was another bang to her right, and Maddie’s head snapped up to see the metal ghost being thrown into a tree. The tree splintered, and both the tree and the ghost fell to the ground. Phantom landed beside him, arms crossed, looking as smug as ever.

The ghost spit out a leaf. “You are insufferable.”

“Good. Maybe if I annoy you to death squared, you’ll actually  _ leaf  _ me alone this time.” Phantom smirked. “Get it? ‘Cause you have leaves all over you. Because you landed on a tree.”

The metal ghost glared. “You will not make a fool of me, whelp.”

“Ah, it’s a little too late for that one! Sorry about that, Skulker!”

“What are you…” The metal ghost squirmed, attempting to push itself off the ground, and then stopped. “What did you do to me?”

Phantom held up a glowing blue hand with an ice crystal twirling between its fingers. His eyes let out a burst of blue light. “Oh, you know, the usual.” It reached into its belt and pulled out a Fenton Thermos. 

Maddie had known about the stolen technology for a few months now, ever since she saw Phantom using it on the news one night. The fact that Phantom had managed to bypass both her and Jack’s ecto-security alarms, break into their basement, and steal the tech right under their noses was chilling.

“Say goodnight, Skulker!”

Phantom flicked a switch on the device and it activated, spilling blue light in its path. The metal ghost was ripped from the ground and suctioned into the device, disappearing from sight. Phantom capped the device, and just like that, the air was still.

Phantom sighed, rolling its shoulders and stretching its neck. It pulled out a cell phone and tapped away at the device.

Maddie didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. She stared at Phantom from behind the bush like a predator stalking its prey.

This was it. Everything she had worked so hard for was about to pay off. All the hard, long months of research, the tired nights spent conducting experiments, the back and forth with Jack over possible theories and new weapons—it was all going to be over soon.

All she had to do was wait for Phantom to make its next move.

Phantom tapped at the screen for another second—the fact that the ghost seemed to be  _ communicating  _ with someone else on the device was revolting enough—before locking the phone and storing it away. It glanced around, as if searching for something, before shrugging and closing its eyes.

A blinding flash of light overtook its body.

Maddie squinted. She had never seen this before from Phantom. Was this some sort of ritual the ghost undertook after fulfilling its obsession? Was this how it gained power?

But before she could dwell on the light might longer, it formed a ring and separated, traveling up and down the ghost’s body until—

Maddie jolted upright and started to move forward before freezing in her tracks. She inhaled sharply.

No...no...this couldn’t be happening.

Danny— _ her _ Danny—stiffened.

He had noticed her. He knew he was being watched. He was going to see that she was there, and then what? He was dead. He was her son and she  _ must  _ have killed him there was simply no other way this could have happened  _ how  _ did this happen and what the hell was he? 

There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She couldn’t move, her feet wouldn’t let her anyway, and it was all over now.

Danny whirled around, and his eyes doubled in size at the sight of her. “Mom,” he gasped. His mouth opened, then slammed shut.

Maddie remained a statue, unblinking as she tried to remember how to breathe.

It was possible that this wasn’t even her son. It could be that Phantom had captured her son, and was just pretending to be him. Or maybe her son was safely tucked in bed, and Phantom was just using his image to walk around town unnoticed. That was a better answer than the one she was thinking of, right? There was no way her son was dead. She would have known. Oh god, she  _ had  _ to have known if he was. There was just...this couldn’t be possible...it wasn’t possible…

But as they stared into each others eyes for an agonizingly long moment, and she saw the myriad of emotions flickering through his face, she knew deep down that this was her Danny.

“Mom…”

Maddie shook her head. “You’re not...not Danny…”

Hurt flashed through his eyes. “I’m sorry. I am.”

She knew that. She already knew that.

“Impossible.”

“Mom, you  _ have _ to believe me. I’m sorry.”

Maddie swallowed. It was so obvious now— _ everything _ was. The late nights, broken curfew, aversions to their inventions, the lies, the bad grades, detentions, mood swings, the random injuries she always saw and wrote off as just teenage boys being boys. It was like a fog had lifted in her mind, and now suddenly everything was clear. It all made sense.

But it was impossible.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you. I just...you know, the portal accident happened and—and then things just kept going wrong, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me and I’m sorry I’m so sorry, I didn’t know how to get it out and I was afraid—oh god, I thought you were going to hurt me and I’m so—I’m  _ sorry _ I know I should have trusted you, but please, Mom, you have to believe me I—I tried so hard to tell you and do the right...the right thing... _ please _ .” Danny’s voice cracked, and he lifted a hand to his eyes. “ _ Please _ .”

A voice in the back of her mind told her that she was still gripping her ecto-gun with white knuckles, and the same voice insisted she at least lower the gun.

But she didn’t.

Instead, her feet took a step back, and then another.

“ _ Mom… _ ”

Because the realization of who  _ he _ was in relation to who  _ she _ was hit her all at once, and suddenly she felt sick. This was her son, and she’d spent the last year hunting him with the intent of eliminating him from this plane of existence. Hell, her entire goal tonight was to capture and eliminate her own child.

For  _ months  _ she’d spent her time shooting at her  _ son.  _

And he was scared of her now. Terrified. This was her son and he couldn’t trust her enough to tell him the biggest change he’d ever experience in his life—whatever that word meant now. Oh god, she’d tried to kill her  _ son.  _ What mother mercilessly hunts her own child?

Another step backwards. A shaky breath out.

This was her own child and she dedicated her life to ending his.

“Mom!”

She couldn’t do this. She didn’t deserve to be called his mother. She was a monster.

She had to get out of here.

“Mom, please! You have to—to listen! I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The dark sky were too open, as if it were trying to swallow her whole. The moon cast a glow down, breaking up the darkness with a spotlight directed at her.  _ Shame on you,  _ it seemed to say.  _ You monster. Look at you. You hunted your son. You killed your child. Shame, shame, shame. _

It was all her fault he was like this now.

It was her neglect that caused this.

It was her anger, her malignity, that allowed this game of cat and mouse to continue.

Her fault.

She took another step back, and her foot caught on a rock. She stumbled, nearly dropping the ecto-weapon, before steadying herself. Her eyes readjusted, and once again she saw her son standing beneath the stars, his face shining with tears and unspoken truths, and she couldn’t say a thing.

“ _ Please… _ ” he whispered.

Maddie shook her head.

Her son was dead and it was her fault.

“Well, that’s it then.” Danny ended their staring contest, turning his head up at the stars. “That’s it. I guess it’s my fault for thinking you and Dad would accept me, even after everything. I was stupid, I know. I’m sorry. I won’t...if this is what you—you want. I can...I’ll just...I—I can go.”

Before Maddie could react, bright rings appeared around Danny, turning him back into Phantom—no, he was  _ still Danny _ .

Electric green eyes shifted over to her one last time, and Maddie flinched. It was still Danny, still her son. 

So why did she keep reminding herself?

A flash of anger overtook his face before he leapt into the sky and disappeared into the night.

And she just stood there. Allowing it to happen.

The ecto-gun fell to the ground. Suddenly it was like she was breathing through a straw. She let out a shuddering breath, but it wasn’t enough. She needed air.

She frantically searched her pockets, ripping out ecto-weapon after ecto-weapon, hurling them against the ground like they were parasites. How could one person have this many collapsible weapons on their person at one time, anyway? It was unsightly. No wonder why Danny didn’t want to hug her anymore.

Her hand brushed against something smooth, and she desperately clawed the object from her pocket.

Her cellphone. This was what she needed.

The phone unlocked with a click, and she wasted no time pressing the home button and demanding the phone to, “Call Jack.”

The few bouts of rings while she waited for her husband to pick up were agonizing. What would he say, knowing that she was the reason why their son ran off tonight? What would he think when she told him it was  _ their  _ invention that killed him? How would he react knowing their son was the object of their despise for so long?

“Maddie?” Jack’s voice crackled through the speaker. “What’s going on, did you find his haunt?”

She shook her head, not caring if he couldn’t see her. “No—no, Jack! I—”

“Where are you?”

“Jack, it’s Danny!”

“Danny?” Jack’s voice raised in alarm. “What about him? What happened?”

“He—he ran off! He’s gone!”

She could hear his thundering footsteps through the speaker.

“He’s gone!” she repeated. Her voice cracked.

“What—he’s not in his room. Where is he? Why didn’t you tell me you went out to find him? Mads, I could have helped! What’s going on?”

“No, it’s not—”

“Where is he?”

“Jack, I was just with him! He ran off!”

There was a slight pause. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his voice laced with confusion.

“He—Jack, Danny is Phantom!”

“What…? Maddie, you’re not making sense.”

Maddie pressed her fist against her forehead. “The portal, Jack! The accident last year! Danny was killed in  _ our  _ portal, and he’s Phantom! He’s been—oh, Jack. Danny’s been Phantom this whole time. He’s—”

“No.” Jack’s sharp voice cut in. “No, Maddie. That’s not true. Come on, that’s ridiculous. Danny as Phantom? Babe, our boy couldn’t hurt a fly! He’s not  _ Phantom _ .”

Maddie shook her head again. “But I just saw him transform out of his ghost personna in the park. He—he saw me. I wasn’t quiet enough and he tried to  _ explain _ himself but I couldn’t—”

“Maddie, we would know if our son was a  _ ghost _ . We’re ecto-scientists! And ghost hunters! It was just Phantom playing tricks on you. He probably has Danny kidnapped in his haunt too. Come home, we need to get this spook once and for all.”

“No, Jack, you’re not—I saw him, okay? I saw him! That was  _ Danny. _ ”

“No, you’re not being rational.” Jack insisted. “We would know if that  _ thing  _ was—”

“Jack, listen to me! Please! I need you to trust me.”

There was silence on the other end of the line. Maddie could almost see the tense muscles in her husband’s jaw, his teeth grinding ever so slightly in frustration.

But he was quiet, which meant he was listening. 

She exhaled and started speaking. “I know it’s hard to believe. Impossible, even. But that  _ thing  _ was Danny. Jack, you should have seen him when he saw me. He looked... _ afraid _ . He was scared of me, of  _ us _ . Terrified. I’ve never seen a ghost look that way before.”

“He could have just been putting on an act, you know.”

“No, I would have known if he was being manipulative. Besides,  _ he _ ran from  _ me _ . He could have stayed and knocked me down where I stood. He could have tortured me with memories of this past year—that’s what any ghost would have done. But he  _ didn’t _ . He flew off. He was scared, apologetic, and then just vanished. I’ve never seen that behavior from a ghost before.”

Jack sighed. “We always did say he was a strange ghost.”

“He did act different around us. We’ve talked about it before. You know he always seemed off whenever he called one of us by our names.”

“If you think it’s him,” Jack said carefully. “If you  _ truly  _ believe it’s him, then you  _ have  _ to find him. Ghost or not, he’s a child and he’s not in his room. And if that ghost  _ is  _ Danny, then we need to talk. All of us. I’m gonna go out there and look for the  _ human  _ Danny, but you have to tell me if you find him, okay? Please, Mads, I’ll leave the blasters at home if I need to. I just need to know he’s okay.”

“Okay,” Maddie agreed. She glanced down at the pile of ecto-weapons at her feet. “I’ll let you know as soon as I find anything.”

“Good.” Jack’s voice sounded relieved. “I’ll talk to you soon. By the way, do you have any idea where he might be?”

“No...I...he disappeared. I don’t...I might know. One place. Maybe.”

“Oh, where?”

Maddie turned away from her weapons and headed for the road. The building was less than a mile away. It would be faster by car, but she could make good time on foot if she hurried. “I...you take the GAV and go out looking for him. It’ll be easier if we split up, we can cover more ground. I’m gonna try this one location, and if it’s a bust I’ll tell you.” 

“Okay.” Jack said. 

In the background, Maddie could hear the jingling of car keys.

“Okay,” Jack repeated. “I love you. Bye, talk soon.”

“You too.”

The phone went silent between them.

\---

Maddie was still a good distance from the Nasty Burger when she saw the faint glow outlined on the roof. She let out a breath of relief. He was there, exactly where she thought he would be, at his favorite hangout spot in Amity Park.

If that wasn’t telling that Phantom was her son, then she didn’t know what was.

Maddie crept around the back of the building, vaguely aware that she would have to reveal her presence soon. It was really just luck that Danny hadn’t noticed her yet, even with his heightened ghost senses. Though, judging by his hunched posture as well as the quiet sniffles sounding from his direction, Maddie knew just why that was.

She stopped in her tracks. She was finally close enough to call out to Danny, but when she opened her mouth, no words came out. It was as if someone pressed the mute button on her voice. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t say anything.

She brought her arms in close to her chest, hugging her body with gloved hands. Her fingers trembled. It was too warm a night for her to be shivering like this.

After this, it would all be over between them. The secrets, the lies, the twisted half-truths and layers upon layers of false assumptions. Every wall they had unknowingly built up between them would be torn down.

And where would their relationship be at the end of this? Once their metaphorical bunker was broken into, what would be on the inside? Would they at least get a flashlight to navigate the dusty room, or would she be forced to reach out blindly for support?

Everything was about to change.

She took a deep breath. “Danny?”

The sniffling stopped. Maddie strained her ear for footsteps, a whoosh of wind,  _ anything  _ to tell her that Danny had ran away again, but she didn’t hear anything.

“Don’t go. Please,” she said.

She listened, but there was still no movement from the roof.

It was now or never.

“I know it’s you. I know you’re not just Phantom. I know you’re Danny, my kid. I—I don’t…” Tears blurred her vision, and she pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “I don’t understand. What’s happening. I, um, one minute I think my son’s just a regular boy, and the next I find out he’s not, and I don’t know…”

There was still no sound from above her. But Maddie had the distinct feeling he was still there, listening, most likely terrified of what she was going to say.

Her arm fell limp at her side. “Danny, I want you to know that I’m sorry. I’m just...I’m so sorry.”

Tears spilled onto her cheeks, and she took a shuddering breath. She opened her mouth to say more, but all that came out were choked sobs. 

She tried to wipe the tears off her face with her hands, but the rubber material of her gloves only served to smear the liquid around her skin. It wasn’t working, and the rubber texture was too smooth, too slippery, too…

Ghost hunter.

Trembling fingers tore off the gloves and threw them on the ground. Finally, her hands were free of their rubber constraints. But when she glanced down at her fingers, she instantly regretted taking off the gloves. Because now there was nothing to protect her from the sight of the very hands that killed her son, and tormented him after death.

A fresh wave of tears clouded her vision. “Oh god, I’m so sorry, Danny. I did this. I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I knew building the portal in our house was dangerous, especially after what happened to Vlad. I never could have imagined a worse outcome. But it  _ did  _ happened and now you’re...you’re...”

She sniffed. “I’m just so proud of you. Even after the accident, I can’t imagine what this has been like and I—I’m so sorry. I never meant to—to make you feel unsafe. I just love you so much and I’m—”

“Mom.” A clipped voice cut through her thoughts. 

She heard a scuffling sound from the roof, and then before she could blink, Phantom appeared standing before her, his glow encasing his body like a protective blanket.

His electric green eyes stared wide up at her. 

Even now, after  _ everything,  _ his eyes still held his innocence. How had she not made this connection before? Those were clearly  _ Danny’s  _ eyes, even if they were green.

“Mom. It’s not—I’m okay.”

She looked away. “No, Danny. Stop, you don’t have to—”

“No! You don’t understand,” he protested. “I’m not...dead.”

Her eyes snapped back to him. Not dead? “What do you mean?”

“The accident—the portal—it didn’t kill me all the way. I’m still alive, you see?” 

There was a blinding flash of light, the same one as in the park, and suddenly Phantom was morphing into the image of Danny.  _ Her  _ Danny.

The same Danny that recently brought home an A in chemistry after finally admitting he needed help and signing up for the school tutoring service. He had been so proud, and so had Maddie. She always knew he was capable of more than he thought, and to see his own face of realization that no, he  _ wasn’t  _ stupid meant the world to her.

“Look,” he said, holding out his wrist to her. “Feel my pulse. I still have one.”

She reached down and touched his arm with delicate movements. His skin was cool to the touch, as it always had been since the accident. Before, she could blame that on a simple case of raynaud’s, where his blood circulation was simply just slightly off from the norm. But now she knew that was a farce. 

“Do you feel it?” 

She brushed her fingers along his wrist, stopping where she knew his pulse should be. But she couldn’t...

“Press down. It’s there, I promise.”

Her trembling fingers pushed against his skin—his  _ human  _ skin—and suddenly she felt it: the steady beat of his pulse.

She gasped, her eyes widening. 

“Yeah, right? It’s a little slow, but it’s there. You see? I’m okay. I’m fine.”

Her eyes stung. She grasped onto his arm. “Oh, Danny.” 

“I know.” He smiled up at her with shiny blue eyes. “I’m sorry I never told you. I just, I didn’t know how.”

“Danny, stop. Please.” Maddie dropped his arm. “I just...how? What—how are you…?”

He looked down at his feet. “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “We think the electricity and ectoplasm in the portal combined with me, um, nearly dying just...turned me like this. We don’t know how or why, though. But I’m not dead. I’m just...I don’t really know.”

“I’m sorry, we?”

“Sam and Tucker,” Danny said. “They were there. Jazz knows, too. She found out later.”

“Oh.” Maddie’s eyebrows shot up. “Of course.”

Jazz knew? And she didn’t share it with her parents?

Well, in her defense, had Maddie and Jack ever given her a reason to? She had always been so vocal about her disapproval of their profession. Maddie had never chalked it up to anything other than the normal, “my parents are so embarrassing” phase that every teenager went through. But looking back, was this really it? Or were all the gruesome weapons, the talks of dissection, their insidious planning and plotting at the dinner table about what they would do to Phantom if they ever caught him—could those be the reasons why Jazz would tell her about Danny?

God, even thinking about that made Maddie nauseous. How could Danny even look her in the eye after all this? He must have been so scared. He was probably waiting for the day Jack and Maddie would see Phantom as a “good ghost” like Danny and Jazz had always argued he was, but they never came around.

How would he ever forgive her for this?

“Danny?” Maddie found herself saying.

His eyes shifted up to her. “Yeah?” 

“I’m…” Maddie reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t flinch at her contact, his eyes didn’t waver.

After everything, he wasn’t scared of her. He didn’t look at her like she was a monster, he looked at her like he was her  _ child.  _

Maddie wrapped her arms around him, pulling him close. She felt for his reaction, any sign of stiffness or even a slight flinch that would indicate his fear to her, but she felt none of that. Despite  _ everything  _ she had done to him, his first instinct was to place his arms around her back and lean into her shoulder.

He wasn’t afraid of her. He should have been terrified, but he wasn’t. He just wanted her support. Her  _ love.  _

_ He just wanted to be accepted.  _

That realization hit Maddie like a ton of bricks, and she found herself squeezing Danny closer to her, putting her hand against his scalp and running her fingers through his hair.

_ I do love you, Danny,  _ she wanted to say, but her voice 

“I love you so much.” Maddie squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m so sorry, I love you more than you’ll ever know.”

“I love you too, Mom.”

“And I can’t imagine how hard this has been for you. You’ve done so well, Danny. Your father and I are so proud of you. All we ever wanted was for you and Jazz to be happy and healthy, no matter where you ended up in life. Nothing has changed from this. I still want only for you to be happy and healthy, and I will do everything in my power to support you in this.”

“Thank you,” he whispered. “That’s...that means a lot.”

Danny pulled back and looked up at her, his eyes cautious. “Can you promise me something?”

“Of course. Anything.”

“Promise me—” Danny shifted, tugging his hoodie over his hands. “Promise me you won’t try any experiments on me. Like, to try to tear the ghost out of me or something crazy like that. I know you would mean well but...this is permanent, you know? I have...there’s another...there’s someone like me out there. You don’t know them—they live in the Ghost Zone—but there’s someone else. And that person is very gifted with technology too, and they researched half ghost biology for decades and it’s—uh—it’s permanent. There’s no cure. And honestly…” 

He looked down shyly. Pink dotted his cheeks. “Honestly, if given the choice, I don’t think I would reverse this. I know that sounds insane, but I finally feel like I have a purpose. For years I was just...I felt lost. I’m not a good student like you or Jazz, I’m not creative like Dad, I’m not good at sports and I don’t know...I felt useless. I always wanted to work for NASA, but I never thought I was smart enough. But now…” 

He stared at her with a determined expression she recognized as one of Phantom’s signature looks. “Now I know what I want in life. I want to help people, to  _ protect  _ people. There are a thousand different ways to do that, and I’m meeting so many new people through Phantom and talking to so many different types of people and ghosts and I feel  _ good.  _ I don’t know, I just...I need this.”

“Oh, Danny.” Maddie smiled down at him. “I never pulled you into my lab as a test bunny when you were human, didn’t I?  _ Of course  _ I’m not going to now. I would never do that. And I’ll pass the message to Jack, alright?”

“Okay. Thank you. A lot.”

She shook her head. “No need to thank me. You’re my son, and I would do anything for you.”

Maddie bent down and wrapped her arms around Danny one last time. He was still short for his age, but she noticed that she didn’t have to bend down as far to hug him as she normally did. She tightened her fingers around his back, and through his clothes she could feel the firm skin on his shoulders. 

Her little boy was growing up. He was maturing into his own person. His own wonderful, independent, person. 

She pulled back. “Now let’s go home, yeah? Your father’s worried sick, and it’s late. It’s—oh goodness, it’s nearly midnight! Come on, I’ll call your father. He can pick us up.”

“Okay, okay. Jeez, Mom, don’t you know that high schoolers are all sleep deprived anyways?”

She ruffled Danny’s hair, much to his visible irritation and hand-swatting.

There it was. Even though he was getting older, she was still his mother. She knew how to get under his skin better than anyone.

Her son. 

Her half ghost, half human, ectoplasm-powered son.

“I love you.”


End file.
